Animals

It delivers on everything you expect from the cover & more. Lo oscillates between partying w/ her drug-smuggling friend and sobering up to marry her prissy fiancé, who is a pianist suddenly made teetotal by the threat of turning 30/“professionalism.” As things progress, it seems the drinking is a distraction from her snarky musician BF—their only chemistry the dumb hate sex—but all is implied, every scene the right amount of showing you her feelings/past without boringly spelling it out.I thought I was well-versed in UK lit & mod Brit TV, but such slang and strange humor DRENCHES these pages. Luckily, context nudges you toward the gist and after a few pages the flow is remarkable, fluttering between morosely poetic and crassly current. The only problem is the dialogue is totally unrealistic: so constantly clever and the American friend doesn’t sound like she ever stepped foot in The States.Forgivable but noticeable—such is also the case with surprising amount of talk about 💩ing! One last note is that there are too many characters, plenty of whom who don’t even need names (they are relatives we only see for a page), or many have too similar sounding (always short names like Jim, John, Jean, Julian, Norm, Marty) or gender-swapped names (Tyler is a girl) so it can be a tad confusing.Even though most everybody in the book seems like a selfish person (Tyler the craziest, stealing Mandy [Brit molly| and being a general nuisance to the world), you don’t mind much because their blunders are so entertaining. (A man mistakes a midget for a child in a bar, Lo uses the bathroom in front of her fiancé’s fam w/o knowing it, Tyler lights a trash can on fire during a poetry event).

A 3 1/2 would be fairer. Not a bad book - kept me reading - but perhaps only because it had parallels with some things I have experienced.Story is not deep, but funny at times. And of couse the reflective life changing event, then happy ending

100 % worth the read. Gets a bit flowery towards the end but, by then, the author’s earned it. Enjoy!

If nothing else, this book will make you feel better about your life because these characters are truly s***shows.

Conceptually good, I really wanted to love this book. But it felt quite repetitive on nights out, drinking, taking drugs. I think I hoped it would be a bit grittier about the friendship and fiancé. Some lovely moments in there too though.

Really nice book I enjoyed reading it while traveling.

Refreshing!

I love this book! I laughed A LOT - these girls are crazy. I recommend this for a woman's book club!

I didn't expect to like this book it isn't my usual type of reading material but after catching the author in conversation the other day on the Internet I thought I will try that book. I ended up loving the book reading it in two days as I just couldn't put it down. I wanted to know what happened at the end so desperately. The lives of the two main protagonists really got to me and I wanted to find out the end of their journey. The characters are flawed and definitely push the boundaries of a lot of things to get what they want. Are drugs and alcohol the key to a happy, joyful life? I think this book is about growing up, friendships and family. It's also about pushing yourself to the limit and how you deal with the consequences of those actions. I don't think this book is for everyone especially if you do not approve of the constant abuse of alcohol and drugs. However this book does illustrate the consequences of over doing things and how things can easily get out of control. The two main characters are very different. They share a great friendship but is it a healthy friendship? Are they really any good for each other? This book explores that in great detail and also how a boyfriend thrown into the mix can easily upset the equilibrium. At times there were echos of Sally Rooney's Normal People, which also focused on what is a healthy or unhealthy relationship. This book also looks at what is love and what do we expect from a relationship. I loved the writing style. I found it a breathe of fresh air. I am pleased I gave this book a try.

I was compelled to write a review to exhort people not to fall for the publicity around this book it is utter rubbish. The prose is good, very well written, lots of quirky expressions. Just the prose. Nothing else. There is no plot. There is no backbone to the story. The characters are not engaging and Unworth tries very hard to make somes situations funny but they're not. I was just as bad as those two girls when I was young yet the story didn't resonate with me. Prose 10/10. Plot big fat zero.

Laura is at a crossroads in her life. Engaged to sensible, sober musician Jim, she shares a flat with her best mate, drinking buddy and partner-in-crime Tyler. Torn between these two worlds, she is forever waking up hungover after a night of partying and then spending the following day kidding herself that she isn't going to do it all over again that evening.Funny, brash, crude and downright fabulous, above all Animals is an unflinching, visceral and uncompromising portrait of female friendship. Highly recommended - especially for fans of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag.

I struggled with the rating- wanted to give it 3.5 stars- 4 stars for the first half + 3 stars for the second half..but 4 it is!EJU has a unique writing style and an impressive vocabulary. She describes everyday thoughts and things in a such a true and honest way. It's direct yet poetic. I immediately 'got' the two main characters. Some of it is laugh out loud funny, in my opinion. I giggled to myself on the tube over 'HE JUST CAUGHT YOU LOOKING AT HIS BELT BUCKLE'- maybe I'm weird but I can definitely relate to that!As someone who is attempting to write a book which focuses more on character than plot, and who has an appreciation of such literature, I did find the plot here somewhat lacking. Also, I don't believe every chapter should necessarily be a cliff hanger, but I found the endings to be too abrupt, leaving me cold and not particularly eager to turn the page.Another little niggle was that although Tyler was a vivid and very believable character, toward the end I found her antics a bit too much, they had wore me out- to the point where my eyes were compelled to roll when she came out with yet another random, off-the-wall statement.Overall, I enjoyed the first half of the book quite a bit, but sadly due to a lack of plot/variety, not so much the last half of the book.I'm glad I read it, and I will definitely be reading more EJU in the future because she really is a clever writer, there's just a bit of cleaning up here and there required- IMHO, of course : )

I bought this book following a recommendation on a podcast. Disappointingly I found the style of writing really difficult to follow and relate to. It felt like one chaotic and meaningless conversation / scenario to another. I tried very hard to persist, and really wanted to like it but I had to stop half way through from the sheer boredom of it.